Tag: featured
Beach Slang Bring Their Noughties Revival to the Troubadour
Brent Smith
May 9, 2016
Smack dab in the middle of their USA Spring Tour, Beach Slang packed the Troubadour and brought their revived noughties sound that’s got people buzzing from coast to coast. What’s that sound, you ask? Emo revival? So soon? Well, you be the judge. It’s not FIDLAR, but it’s not exactly Fallout Boy either (sigh of relief). Lead singer James Alex is another shining, sweaty example of how it’s never too late to punk—even for dads. Like imagine if Jason Bateman’s character in Juno hit it big instead of creeping on a pregnant teenager. What I was really stoked on were the opening acts: California, Dyke Drama, and Potty Mouth. It’s always nice to get to know some non-local talent up close and personal, and Beach Slang was bringing new noise from all over the map. The night kicked off with newly-formed, SF-based California, fronted by touring-guitarist-turned-official-member of Green Day, Jason White, Jawbreaker drummer, Adam Phaler and Dustin Clark of The Insides. As White graciously introduced each song—tracks like “Bad Direction,” “Cut & Paste,” and “No Hoodoo”—a few circa-2000 punks showed up out of the woodwork, witnessing a 3-piece of alt-rock vets riding the new west coast garage wave, diving in
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Bleached Bring Catchy Hooks, 818 Pride & Friends to Teragram Ballroom
Danny Baraz
May 8, 2016
There are certain taboos in modern day, independent music journalism which you don’t breach, for any reason, lest you be nailed to the cross of insignificance. You don’t speak ill of Ty Segall, John Dwyer or Mac DeMarco, never say anything negative of Low End Theory and never play cards with a guy who’s named after a city. Then again, if classic day journalists from Rolling Stone were able to trash Black Sabbath and Zeppelin and continue to increase their circulation despite saying Jimmy Page was “a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs.” I have very little fear of being judged for “getting it wrong” and most of the time, I’m willing to go out on a limb if I believe in what I’m saying. I think I was the only person who reviewed Tame Impala’s “Currents” that didn’t put Kevin Parker’s musical pee pee in my mouth. And now that I’ve had more time with that album, I stand by every statement, even though 3 or 4 songs on that album have grown on me since the time I reviewed it. That being said, saying that I’ve always thought the band Bleached and their live
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Close Encounters with Kim and the Created At The Echoplex
Rob Shepyer
May 4, 2016
I get stoked whenever I know that Kim and the Created are going to play. Not just because I’m a lifetime punk that’s interested in how new talent is pushing the envelope but because I got a hunch big enough to disturb Quasimodo that someday they’re gonna be famous. The first time I saw Kim and the Created live was her December 12th 2015 L.A. homecoming to Bootleg Bar after a European tour that sent them to France the day after the Paris Massacre. About twenty people were present at the Bootleg show, just enough to let her prowl between us and shock us awake. Her antics included pouring beer over her head, hurling bottles into the audience, crawling around on all fours, toppling over stools and tables, and getting atop the bar and kicking over the display beers until the bartender signaled the sound guy to cut the show, thankfully it this was the last song anyway. Needless to say, her May 2nd 2016 homecoming after an East Coast tour supporting the Kills had more people, both old and new fans and a new Kim. Wu-Wu a.k.a. Ashley Rose Calhoun opened the night with a poppy, electronic call to
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Deap Vally & Le Butcherettes’ Double Assault on the Regent Theater
Brent Smith
May 3, 2016
Rock N’ Roll Dance Party at the Regent this past Saturday, presented by Dance in a Panic and featuring Deap Vally and Le Butcherettes, served as a perfect microcosm for a new reality in rock. The recent Tidal wave (see what I did there?) of Beyoncé’s Lemonade is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to women’s dominance in rock. Yes, rock. Even Queen Bey is wising up and digging into her rock and roll roots (note “Don’t Hurt Yourself” featuring Jack White), some of which no doubt, lie with unsung female blues singers like Big Mama Thornton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Alabama Shakes’ “Don’t Wanna Fight” winning for Best Rock Song at the Grammys was a victory for more than just Brittany Howard (the first black woman to win in the rock genre since Tracy Chapman in ’97). Pay attention and the beacons for the recent shift away from a predominantly male-dominated arena are there. The good news is that it only gets better—much better—the deeper down into that iceberg you go. I’ve never seen KAV live before—the event’s resident band, but they sounded a bit flat. I wasn’t sure if that was a regular thing, or
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Dab Hits and The Damned on 420 at The Glass House
Taylor Wong
April 23, 2016
4/20, a holiday I have been somewhat celebrating since sophomore year when I first discovered pot. I’m not the kind of guy who makes a big deal out of smoking pot, let alone celebrating a holiday based on smoking pot, which ironically falls on one of the worst days ever (Columbine’s anniversary and Hitler’s birthday). But I’m also not going to not smoke pot. Who am I kidding? Pot to me today is like what my mom made Adderall for me throughout my school years. It gets me through the day and helps me tolerate the majority of the idiots out in the real world. That, along with The Damned at The Glass House in Pomona made for a very festive 4/20. I met up with my good friend Westin, bought a shit ton of pot, then picked up Pedro (of Them Howling Bones) and our dear friend Vera and headed to Pomona for The Damned. The Damned were introduced to me while I was in middle school. I was given the CD Machine Gun Etiquette in a box full of CD’s put together by my uncle’s, one of which was the drummer of DI so you know the box
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2016 Is The Year That Coachella Jumped The Shark
Danny Baraz
April 22, 2016
On a yearly basis, I sacrifice my already sus street cred to attend Coachella; a festival so widely loathed by the discerning hipster that it insures a sell out within moments of tickets going on sale. As 10’s of thousands of people descend on the Coachella Valley for week 2 of the festival, I offer those that have stayed behind a look back on a Week 1that has far surpassed the past years of vacuousness and fuckboyery. I have been defending Coachella ever since it became uncool. It became uncool the moment Goldenvoice decided to stop selling single day tickets. The moment that happened, the festival became out of reach for most music fans and understandably, those music fans rail against the festival and it’s attendees at every opportunity. Afterall, the fact that Uber is now offering helicopter rides into the venue for the low price of $700 should be all you need to know about the setting for weekend 1 inside the Empire Polo Fields. Last year, I wrote an article called “Coachella: No History In Your Hate”. I’ve been to 11 out of the 16 installments of Coachella and it has created some of the fondest concert memories
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The NSA Announces May 18th Sanders Fundraiser at Regent Theater
Danny Baraz
April 21, 2016
New Sound Alliance and Janky Smooth are proud to announce A Fundraiser for Bernie Sanders on May 18th at The Regent Theater. The show will take place just a couple weeks prior to the California primary on June 7th. This is the first event by the newly launched political action group, The New Sound Alliance. The NSA seeks to unite the music community in organizing bands, labels, promoters, managers and publicists to organize our voices in an effort to engage young voters and activists. The fundraiser for Senator Sanders will feature The Garden, Kim and the Created, Death Hymn Number 9, The Birth Defects and all star punk rock legends, Punk Rock Karaoke that features members of Circle Jerks/Bad Religion, The Dickies and Adolescents as YOUR backing band while you sing punk rock classics on the stage of The Regent Theater in Downtown L.A. There is also a super special secret guest that we can’t announce until the beginning of May! All profits will be donated to the Sanders campaign. Purchase Tickets Here It is sure to be a fun and meaningful night as we raise money for Bernie Sanders in his quest for a political revolution just weeks before the
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LCD Soundsystem Skirt City of Los Angeles In Return to West Coast
Danny Baraz
April 13, 2016
Even before LCD Soundsystem took the stage at the Fox Theater in Pomona, walking into the venue and seeing the stage set up caused goose bumps up and down my arm. A dozen music stations with various traditional and futuristic musical instruments littered the stage in clumps of components and wires. I didn’t get press access to this highly sought after event. Instead, my friend Jeremy scored a ticket by camping out at Permanent Records through Saturday morning and graciously offered it to me. I accepted. As with most events in a theater venue like this, to get on the floor in the “pit” area for the show you have to show up early and get a floor “wristband”. We arrived in Pomona at about 5:45 pm. LCD Soundsystem wouldn’t start their set until 10:04 pm. We were herded through various lines and holding areas near the venue until the doors opened at 8pm. At one point we were closed in to gates in a snaking line that filled up the area like some sort of hipster Auschwitz. But when the gates opened and we began filing into the Fox, it became very real that I was about to see
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Inter-Review With Charles Moothart on Eve of CFM Release
Brent Smith
April 8, 2016
CFM – Still Life of Citrus and Slime: An Interview with Charles Moothart “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” -Samuel L. Johnson That famed opening axiom is no less true with CFM’s Still Life of Citrus and Slime, in which Charles Moothart goes full wolfman to transmit a bubbly, thick, and no doubt, arresting solo debut. For Moothart—the proper Lennon to Ty Segall’s McCartney—his new LP (In The Red Records) is an analog sigil for some gnarly soul searching. For the rest of us lucky bastards, it’s an incendiary trip of sour neon rock ‘n’ roll that, without it, immediately leaves your record collection wanting. It was more of a vision quest than an attempt to make a rock album. “There was no timetable to worry about,” he told me over the phone. “It was nice to go into a room and shut the door and forget about time and just let it happen as it needed to happen.” Moothart took a piecemeal approach, channeling sounds strung together spontaneously as he jumped from one instrument to the next; any scheming be damned. Though the album was composed as more extemporaneous
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Save Frank Zappa’s Vault Before It’s Too Late
Brent Smith
April 6, 2016
Attn: Zappa freaks, art geeks, fanatical preservationists, and anyone else with their soul still intact. For the first time ever, Frank Zappa’s vault is open to the public. The gigantic, subterranean archive that sits underneath Zappa’s house in the Hollywood Hills is stacked with an endless supply of concert footage, original artwork, travel journals, home movies, lost interviews, private recordings, unreleased B-sides, and probably the documents linking the Panama Papers to major U.S. officials. Okay, that last one I made up, but seriously, this is kind of a big moment. After all, this is the man who bridged the gap between rock ‘n’ roll and politics, and was the kind of walking, talking, spitting art that could turn a bicycle into an instrument. What this means is that we have new Frank Zappa content that can be digitized and experienced by all of us on multiple platforms. The catch is that most of the media in the vault is already eroding away as the dust collects and time wears on. Not only does maintaining an archive require a lot of money and work, but revamping one even more so. In an effort to simultaneously restore Zappa’s archives and produce a
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The Lumineers Folk Off At Red Bull Sound Space
Justin Cornwall
April 5, 2016
You probably know The Lumineers from their folk-rock singles “Hey Ho” or “Stubborn Love”, but what you probably don’t know is that in a live setting they put on an full on absolute barn burner of a performance. They put Mumford & Sons in the shadows, the trio accompanied by supporting backline members ensnare you with genuine storytelling and joyously rolling melodies. Folk rock has never been so prominent in mainstream culture and The Lumineers propel themselves into Top 40 lists effortlessly. We caught The Lumineers at the Red Bull Sound Space at The World Famous KROQ for a Monday afternoon encounter. They’re currently pushing their new album “Cleopatra” (due April 9th, 2016), which is a proper follow up to their self titled 2012 record. Almost exactly 4 years later, the Denver based group are ready to shine again. The brand new songs we heard from this upcoming record, “Ophelia” and “Cleopatra“, dove much deeper than their initial singles – more intricate stories told through honest lyrics and building upon instrumentation they know works. Wesley Schultz, Jeremiah Fraites and Neyla Pekarek – the base trio – explained their infinite gratitude to their initial tracks which broke them, and how happy they are to
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New Album Review: Wild Wing- The Glory Forever
Brent Smith
April 4, 2016
Wild Wing has undergone a peculiar mutation in the last three years. Their first self-titled EP spilled into their second, Another Victory for the Forces of Darkness, both heavy on the combative wit and long instrumental rambling. Songs like “O, Cuntry!” and “Wild Wing Nightmare” are tapped into an unruly swamp sound not felt since the days of Creedence (less finger-pointing protest songs; more working class bar brawl songs). I’m straining to name another hillbilly punk act, but I honestly can’t think of one. Wild Wing pulls off a surfer redneck jive like no one else; cheeky like The Butthole Surfers but not as abstract. If L.A. were to ever have a backwoods sound, now is the time. The band’s first LP The Glory Forever (its cover depicting a native chief stabbing a white soldier in the heart atop bodies of his slain people) is the declaration of a new, weird California sound—the kind that opts out of both Coachella and Stagecoach for a thrash alleyway hoedown on a radioactive beach. If the Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia sold their souls via reality TV contracts and uprooted to Hollywood, Wild Wing is who would play their barn-burning welcoming
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